Zoli posted over here about Zonbu, an ultra cheap, ultra low power, cloud computing device. He also went on to detail some of the limitations of the device – namely limited storage (on board) and limitation in terms of graphics processing.
What we’re seeing here is not a problem with cloud computing devices, but rather the difficulties when transitioning from one paradigm (mega computers with everything – hardware and software – on board) to another (cloud devices). It was always gong to be difficult – until everything (or most things) are truly in the cloud, the device won’t be as small, low power, cheap or simple as it could otherwise be.
Think of Zonbu as an interesting foray into the future – its almost hardware as a service but not quite.
Now about that Apple/Google link up………..
If you want to hear about what is is like to replace a big box PC with the Zonbu, I’ve been blogging about my experiences over the last 3 months. It works better than the hypothesis might otherwise suggest, although there is still lots of room for improvement.
You can read my blog here: http://mrzonbu.wordpress.com
-Mr. Zonbu